Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
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Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
Lets say I have a line drawing that has a dark brown stroke that I want to print on a light brown shirt. Will a non opaque heat transfer using pigment ink be able to just transfer my drawing by pressing the entire paper or is there going to be white residue or any trace of the original paper?
I've been watching some of those youtube heat transfer videos that badalou posted and he cuts out his designs even on white shirts. Most of my designs are too complex to cut out like that. Am I going to have to do sub ink if I want to be able to print line drawings without cutting them out?
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
If you use a paper for light shirts such as Iron All, there will not be a white box, but there will be a transparent, waxy window. This will show up even if you print on a white shirt. The window is more noticable with some papers than others, but generally they all have it.
If you don't want to cut the transfer paper, you might think about using a vinyl cutter and t-shirt vinyl (good for simple designs with less than 3 colors) or plastisol transfers, which have to be custom ordered (not printed on a home printer) instead.
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
Thanks for replying. If I use sublimation ink and paper to print will there still be a waxy window if you don't cut out your design? From what I've read about sublimation only the ink is supposed to transfer.
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
Quote:
Originally Posted by spinningrock
Thanks for replying. If I use sublimation ink and paper to print will there still be a waxy window if you don't cut out your design? From what I've read about sublimation only the ink is supposed to transfer.
There is no waxy window with dye sublimation. However, you can only use dye sub on shirts that are at least 60% polyester (100% poly is best).
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
I don't know if they make light brown dye sub blanks.
You may want to try different types of transfers depending on the image. Like a plastisol (screen printed) transfer will work on any color garment, but you can't print it at home.
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
What about these DuraCotton papers for laser printers I've been reading about? I guess that could be an alternative I could use to avoid cutting out my designs. I might buy some papers and ask somebody I know who has a laser printer if I can print some test pages.
Although from what I've been reading some printers don't work well with those papers.
I looked all weekend for a quality poly shirt supplier but there just isn't much out there, so I hope that I can find an alternative that I can use on cotton shirts.
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
What kind of printer do you have? Duracotton is just for laser printers. Also, it is still in the testing phase, so far there have been mixed results. Some people are still having a gray window around the design with that paper.
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
I think your best bet is to just try it (or find someone with a press/wholesale t-shirt account to make a sample for you). It can be hard to guess what colors the wax window will be especially noticeable on. On white and ash, it is usually barely noticeable at all. Other light colors vary quite a bit.
For example, I think when we tried a light blue shirt it transfered well and the window was only barely visable, but when we tried a light green shirt it was VERY apparent (oddly enough, we found someone that liked it BETTER like that, hehe). A light brown could go either way, and how much window is too much will depend on you and your customers.
One more thing - cutting out a transfer doesn't have to be exact. We always just cut up to about 1/8" away from the design and don't cut the inside at all. Works just fine.
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
Thanks for your recommendations. I'm going to be at the ISS show in Atlantic City this March. So I'll see if I can learn some stuff there.
What about this Sub DuraCotton? It says it's for inkjet sublimation and not laser printers. The site says that you press a blank sheet of DuraCotton on any 100 percent cotton shirt and that will coat the shirt with an invisible layer that sublimation ink will hold to. I guess I'll have to give that a try as well.
Re: Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts?
Quote:
Originally Posted by spinningrock
What about this Sub DuraCotton? It says it's for inkjet sublimation and not laser printers. The site says that you press a blank sheet of DuraCotton on any 100 percent cotton shirt and that will coat the shirt with an invisible layer that sublimation ink will hold to. I guess I'll have to give that a try as well.
I've been wondering what the point of that is. Spraying something on like that has to create some hand for the shirt, which negates a big part of the dye sub advantage. It seems like at that point it'd generally make more sense just to go with normal transfers from what it sounds like, but I haven't actually seen samples to compare.
This is a discussion about Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts? that was posted in the Heat Press and Heat Transfers section of the forums.
Do you still need to cut out designs on light colored shirts? 
